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The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.

The White House declined to comment late Wednesday night. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a lawyer representing the whistleblower declined to comment.

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.

The dispute is expected to escalate Thursday when Atkinson is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a classified session closed to the public. The hearing is the latest move by committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to compel U.S. intelligence officials to disclose the full details of the whistleblower complaint to Congress. Maguire has agreed to testify before the panel next week, according to a statement by Schiff. He declined to comment for this article.

The inspector general “determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent,” Schiff said in the statement released Wednesday evening. “The committee places the highest importance on the protection of whistleblowers and their complaints to Congress.”

The complaint was filed with Atkinson’s office on Aug. 12, a date on which Trump was at his golf resort in New Jersey. White House records indicate that Trump had had conversations or interactions with at least five foreign leaders in the preceding five weeks.

President Trump defended his relationship June 11 with Kim Jong Un, saying the the North Korean leader has "kept his word." (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Among them was a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the White House initiated on July 31. Trump also received at least two letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the summer, describing them as “beautiful” messages. In June, Trump said publicly that he was opposed to certain CIA spying operations against North Korea. Referring to a Wall Street Journal report that the agency had recruited Kim’s half brother, Trump said, “I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices.”

Trump met with other foreign leaders at the White House in July, including the prime minister of Pakistan, the prime minister of the Netherlands and the emir of Qatar.

Statements and letters exchanged between the offices of the DNI and the House Intelligence Committee in recent days have pointed at the White House without directly implicating the president.

Schiff has said he was told that the complaint concerned “conduct by someone outside of the Intelligence Community.” Jason Klitenic, the DNI general counsel, noted in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Tuesday that the activity at the root of the complaint “involves confidential and potentially privileged communications.”

The dispute has put Maguire, thrust into the DNI job in an acting capacity with the resignation of Daniel Coats last month, at the center of a politically perilous conflict with constitutional implications.

Schiff has demanded full disclosure of the whistleblower complaint. Maguire has defended his refusal by asserting that the subject of the complaint is beyond his jurisdiction.

Defenders of Maguire disputed that he is subverting legal requirements to protect Trump, saying that he is trapped in a legitimate legal predicament and that he has made his displeasure clear to officials at the Justice Department and White House.

After fielding the complaint on Aug. 12, Atkinson submitted it to Maguire two weeks later. By law, Maguire is required to transmit such complaints to Congress within seven days. But in this case, he refrained from doing so after turning for legal guidance to officials at the Justice Department.

In a sign of Atkinson’s discomfort with this situation, the inspector general informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the existence of the whistleblower complaint — without revealing its substance — in early September.

Schiff responded with almost immediate indignation, firing off a letter demanding a copy of the complaint and warning that he was prepared to subpoena senior U.S. intelligence officials. The DNI has asserted that lawyers determined there was no notification requirement because the whistleblower complaint did not constitute an urgent concern that was “within the responsibility and authority” of Maguire’s office.

Legal experts said there are scenarios in which a president’s communications with a foreign leader could rise to the level of an “urgent concern” for the intelligence community, but they also noted that the president has broad authority to decide unilaterally when to classify or declassify information.

Revealing how the United States obtained sensitive information could “compromise intelligence means and methods and potentially the lives of sources,” said Joel Brenner, former inspector general for the National Security Agency.

It was unclear whether the whistleblower witnessed Trump’s communication with the foreign leader or learned of it through other means. Summaries of such conversations are often distributed among White House staff, although the administration imposed new limits on this practice after Trump’s disclosures to Russian officials were revealed.

Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Comment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden, one of Trump’s chief political rivals, in a July phone call, according to reports on Friday by the Wall Street Journal and other U.S. media outlets.

The call featured in a classified whistleblower complaint that has sparked a political battle between Democrats warning of a national security threat and Republicans turning it into an attack on Biden, a frontrunner in the field of Democrats seeking to challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Reuters has not confirmed details of the whistleblower’s complaint. But a source familiar with the matter said it alleged “multiple acts” by Trump, not just a phone call with a foreign leader. The source requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Trump dismissed the Sept. 12 complaint from the whistleblower within the intelligence community as a partisan hit against him.

Trump had spoken with Ukraine’s recently elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, less than three weeks before the complaint was filed. Trump is due to meet Zelenskiy during a United Nations gathering in New York.

The July 25 call between the leaders is under investigation by three Democratic-led House committees, who want to know if Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, tried to pressure the Ukrainian government into aiding Trump’s re-election campaign.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Trump urged Zelenskiy about eight times during the call to work with Giuliani to investigate Biden and Biden’s son. The Washington Post and New York Times also reported details of the call.

Trump said earlier on Friday he did not know the identity of the whistleblower nor the precise accusations but that all of his conversations with foreign leaders had been appropriate.

“It doesn’t matter what I discussed but I will say this: somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement because it was disgraceful, where he talked about millions of dollars that he is not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case. Somebody ought to look into that,” Trump said.

In a statement, Biden said the reports about Trump’s pressure on the call - if true - showed the president abused his office for his own gain. Biden urged the White House to release a transcript of the call and allow Congress to hear from the whistleblower.

“Such clear-cut corruption damages and diminishes our institutions of government by making them tools of a personal political vendetta,” Biden said.

Giuliani said on CNN on Thursday he had asked the Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Biden.

On Friday, Giuliani was seen by Reuters reporters at the Trump International Hotel, a few blocks away from the White House, sitting next to Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian businessman with whom he has recently been working. Giuliani declined comment.

He later was seen at a White House state dinner.

Giuliani has alleged that as vice president, Biden sought the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating his son’s business dealings. Biden and his son have denied the charge.

The former prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had been criticized by the U.S. government and the European Union for larger issues, including blocking reforms to Ukraine’s legal system. Ukraine’s parliament approved his dismissal in March 2016. STONEWALLING

The dispute is the latest chapter of a power struggle in which the Trump administration has been resisting efforts by Democratic lawmakers investigating the president to obtain documents, records and testimony from White House and senior agency officials.

In a Sept. 9 letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone requesting documents, the chairmen of the House foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight committees said the Ukrainian government’s readout of Trump’s call appeared to show that he encouraged Zelenskiy to pursue the Biden investigation.

The chairmen noted the State Department had acknowledged that Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative to Ukraine, subsequently arranged for Giuliani to meet an aide to Zelenskiy in Spain.

The letter also cited news media reports that Trump threatened to withhold more than $250 million in security assistance approved by Congress for Kiev to aid its fight against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The aid was put on hold in early July, but Trump did not discuss it during his call with Zelenskiy, according to media reports.

Vice President Mike Pence discussed the aid with Zelenskiy during a meeting in Warsaw earlier this month. Pence told reporters at the time that he had not discussed Biden in the meeting but did focus on “the issue of public corruption.”

An intelligence community watchdog determined that the whistleblower complaint was credible and should be shared with congressional leaders through a process laid out by U.S. law.

That determination was overridden by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire after consulting with the Justice Department. Maguire is slated to testify next week at the House Intelligence Committee.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the administration was violating federal law by “stonewalling” a congressional inquiry.

“Reports of a reliable whistleblower complaint regarding the president’s communications with a foreign leader raise grave, urgent concerns for our national security,” Pelosi said. “If the president has done what has been alleged, then he is stepping into a dangerous minefield with serious repercussions for his administration and our democracy.”

A senior Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to impeach Trump, said the incident could feed into the panel’s deliberations.

“This is deadly serious,” Representative David Cicilline said on Twitter. “If the President does not allow the whistleblower complaint against him to be turned over to Congress, we will add it to the Articles of Impeachment.”

Comment

There's no proof he's committed a SINGLE impeachable offense. Asserting such doesn't make it true and it doesn't score you points. Rather, this is one of the fall-back positions the DNC orbit has taken to smokescreen and drag red herrings across news of the continuously strong economy.

Tweets of claims aren't proof, and you didn't even provide proof of this supposed event even HAPPENING to begin with, what supposed law was broken here if it did happen as stated which it very likely did NOT, let alone what was "impeachable."

Don't be such a dumb ****.

You just can't dredge up the latest anti-Trump gossip and claim it's an impeachable offense for which he's guilty as charged.

Comment

President Donald Trump repeatedly urged Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter, a new report says.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump urged Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky "about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter."

In another report, a top Ukraine official says Trump "is looking" for Ukraine officials to investigate business dealings of Biden's son in that country in an effort "to discredit" Biden as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.

Comment

There's no proof he's committed a SINGLE impeachable offense. Asserting such doesn't make it true and it doesn't score you points. Rather, this is one of the fall-back positions the DNC orbit has taken to smokescreen and drag red herrings across news of the continuously strong economy.

Tweets of claims aren't proof, and you didn't even provide proof of this supposed event even HAPPENING to begin with, what supposed law was broken here if it did happen as stated which it very likely did NOT, let alone what was "impeachable."

Don't be such a dumb ****.

You just can't dredge up the latest anti-Trump gossip and claim it's an impeachable offense for which he's guilty as charged.

Deny, divert, discredit. Way to go, Jethro. You did the Trifecta Truth Killer Polka!!!!!

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I am fascinated why people support Donald Trump, even if the face of clear law breaking, and impeachable offenses, over and over...

I mean other than picking a few court justices, which anybody could have done... what has he really done that is of material difference in most peoples lives? Signing off on huge deficits... I’ll give that one...

but what else has he really accomplished? An no vague, general statement about regulation roll backs is not an acceptable answer...

how is this Psychopath, at the very least malignant Narcissist, like Teflon with half our political spectrum..